Back from Norway!

After 5 days in Norway I am back hard at work for semester 2. Norway was absolutely amazing and was better the second time! There were 8 of us that caught a flight over to Oslo Torp and then took a bus to the main city center of Oslo that was about 2 hours away. Once in the city center, we found our hostel that we booked and went to sleep. In the morning we walked around the city center in search of a car rental agency. We managed to find a place to rent 2 cars for 3 days. After the cars were settled we decided to explore a bit of Oslo before we began our journey to Hemsedal (the ski resort). We went to the city hall of Oslo, the boat docks, this park called Frogner Park that had dozens of statues of naked people and babies and then through some random neighborhoods that were very pretty. We even walked passed the Greek Embassy that looked like a regular home. I guess that's all that they could afford for their embassy! After we saw a bit of Oslo we began our road trip to Hemsedal. After about 2 hours of going in circles around the city center of Oslo, we finally made it out to the main freeway. The GPS system kept telling us to take the wrong exit and at one point we entered this extremely long tunnel and lost satellite connection so we were lost in the tunnel for about 20 minutes. After a rough 6 hour journey to Hemsedal, we had finally made it to the ski resort around 11pm. The directions to find our loft were horrible as we spent another 1.5 hours trying to find our place. We had to go through a security gate and then drive up the winding roads of the mountain pass. The loft was very nice and it was ski on ski off. The first day was ok for snow but there hadn't been any new snow for a while. The runs were nice but groomed and a bit on the icy side unfortunately. We made the best of it though and were able to get quite a bit of runs in. Over night, a snow storm moved in and dumped a lot of new snow for us on the second day and it snowed the entire day so that there was fresh powder EVERYWHERE! It was so wonderful to have a lot of new snow to ski in. We were on the slopes for a good portion of the morning and at noon we went in for lunch to the ski lodge. Afterwards, we were out on the slopes until 3.30pm and then went back to the ski lodge where there was a live Norwegian band singing nothing but American songs such as Sweet Home Alabama! After the lodge we went back to the loft and packed our things so that we would be ready to head out in the morning. Around 2am we all decided to head to bed. I got into bed and suddenly there was this pounding noise on the neighbor's door. It went away after a couple of minutes and about 10 minutes later the pounding was on our bedroom window and scared me half to death! Jon and I jumped up and went to the front door to see what the commotion was all about and it was this twenty something year old Norwegian guy. He claimed that he had no key to his place and all of his friends were back in town still. He had apparently been sleeping on the back patio of their loft for 30 min in the freezing cold. We let him in and Jon and I sat at the kitchen table with him and phoned the front lobby back in town to have someone come up to let him into his place. After about 15 minutes of talking to this drunk Norwegian guy that had horrible English, the guy from the lobby arrived and took him off of our hands. We finally went to sleep around 2.40am. The next morning we packed our things and headed out of Hemsedal for our 6pm flight.

I am now back in Edinburgh and ready for the week to end. Have had a busy week of practicals and long days and I am for sure ready for the weekend to arrive. I will eventually get the Norway photos up for everyone to see (probably by tomorrow). Hope everyone is doing well. Miss you all! Will post again soon! Oh! I also passed the farm animal integrated clinical exam and found out a couple of days ago. Woohoo! Now we have to take the equine and exotics exam after Easter break. Can't wait for final year to get here so that I can finish and finally start working!